


parenting 101

by Ryah_Ignis



Series: Season 14 Codas [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 14x05 Coda, M/M, Parent Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 07:36:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16572395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryah_Ignis/pseuds/Ryah_Ignis
Summary: "Cas is still looking at the place where Jack disappeared.  Dean nudges his knee.“How are the terrible twos treating you, honey?”The endearment, joking as it is, slips a little too easily off his tongue.Cas sighs.  If he did a double take at the word honey, he doesn’t show it. “He doesn’t trust my judgment.”At that, Dean can’t help a small smile. “Dude, that’s Parenting 101.  You think Sam ever trusted mine?”14x05 coda.  Cas and Dean talk about kids.





	parenting 101

It still takes him by surprise to see all of the people in the bunker.  Every time he turns around, there’s another new face. He’s getting a little better with names, but it would be easier to remember if they’d stop flinching when he shows up unexpectedly around the corner.

And, sure, Dean gets it.  He was the face of their nightmares for nearly a month.  But it would be nice to be able to get a glass of water in the middle of the night without getting a gun pulled on him by some trigger-happy refugee.

Still, it’s getting easier.  He’s always been a fixer. Wrapping up wounds, making sure people are fed?  It’s kind of his thing. 

Even if he’s more comfortable around them than he was before, it’s still a relief to see a face from  _ before  _ in the doorway.  Cas lifts one hand in greeting as he closes the door with the other.  In front of him, Jack offers a pinched smile.

There’s a tightness to his face that Dean can’t quite explain.  If he hadn’t known better, he’d say that the kid’s in pain. But that can’t be it—surely Jack would tell them if he was.  Whatever. He’s got a right to be a little reserved. Jack never really got to be an angsty teenager anyway.

Cas leads him down the steps, a paternal hand on his shoulder.  Something in Dean’s chest tightens. He pushes it away—this is not the time to examine what that feeling means.

As soon as they hit the ground floor, Jack takes off.  Cas watches him go, a slight shake of his head conveying far more to Dean about his opinion than someone else ranting might have.

“We got Sam’s call,” Cas explains, sitting on the edge of the table next to Dean’s research. “I thought it would be best if we came back in.”

Ah.  That explains it.  Jack doesn’t like the implication that he’s not ready to face down super-monsters.  Dean remembers all too well what that’s like. Not from his own experience—Dad had never seemed to draw a line where he was concerned.  But Dean remembers Sam’s sullen face when he tried to dissuade Dad from taking him along on a case he thought was too dangerous.

Cas is still looking at the place where Jack disappeared.  Dean nudges his knee.

“How are the terrible twos treating you, honey?” 

The endearment, joking as it is, slips a little too easily off his tongue.  

Cas sighs.  If he did a double take at the word  _ honey _ , he doesn’t show it. “He doesn’t trust my judgment.”

At that, Dean can’t help a small smile. “Dude, that’s Parenting 101.  You think Sam ever trusted mine?”

As for Dad—well.  Dean had questioned his judgement plenty, but very rarely out loud.  Sometimes, he wonders if things would have been different if he’d started getting mouthy like Sam had as a teen.

“No,” Cas agrees. “I suppose it’s normal.”

“He’s a kid.” A weird, supernaturally aged kid, but still.  A kid. “He’ll realize you were right, eventually. Just like Sammy did.”

Across the room, Sam raises an eyebrow. “Sure.  Yep. Just like I did.”

One of the refugees—a young woman, who, Dean suddenly realizes, was probably one of the ones to tell Sam that she liked the dumb beard—laughs like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard.

Dean hadn’t realized how many people were listening.  He shifts, suddenly uncomfortable. He’s still unused to all of the extra ears in the bunker.

“Let’s get you unpacked.”

Cas begins to say something—probably that there is nothing for him to unpack—but he sees the desperation in Dean’s eyes and follows him to his room anyway.  There are perks to being Michael’s ex-vessel. No one ever dares touch his crap. It’s like they think it’s cursed, and that’s just fine by Dean.

“How are you holding up?” Cas asks gravely.

Like usual, Dean has to pat the space beside him on the bed to get Cas to sit down.  Otherwise, he just stands there in the middle of the room, observing Dean with his head tilted to the side like an incredibly awkward owl.

Dean scoffs. “You know me.  Peachy.”

Neither of them believes that for a second, but Cas knows better by now than to question it.  Instead, he changes the subject.

“Sam said that your mother and Bobby are...hanging out in Donna’s cabin?”

Oh God.  Those are mental images he  _ does not  _ need. Dean manages a nod.  Unfortunately, Cas takes that as permission to carry on.

“I assume that hanging out is a euphemism for—”

“Cas.  Please don’t ever bring up my mother and the word euphemism in the same breath ever again.”

Aside from the occasional scarring mental images, though, he can’t complain that much.  Bobby makes a far more appealing stepfather—is that what he would be?—than Ketch did, that’s for damn sure.  Even if he’s not their Bobby, and Dean finds his general prickliness annoying rather than endearing.

“Dean.  It’s a perfectly natural—”

He holds up a hand. “Dude.”

And here he’d dared to think that he’d managed to teach Cas a few social cues.

“I expected you to be upset,” Cas says after a moment.

Dean shrugs. “She’s a grown-ass woman, Cas.  She can make her own choices.”

He doesn’t feel that lost-in-the-store, little kid sting like he had the last time she’d left.  It seemed the separation—however awful it had been at the time—had done their little family unit good.  Funny how those things worked.

It helps that he trusts Bobby, even some black and white photocopy version, far more than he ever trusted the Men of Letters.

“I just hope he makes her happy,” he finishes lamely.

Bobby or not Bobby, if he doesn’t, Dean’s going to pump him full of rock salt.

“I think he will,” Cas says.

They sit in silence for a few seconds more.  Dean lets the moment wash over him. Being out in the bunker with all of the refugees is exhausting.  It’s like he’s constantly trying to prove himself as trustworthy. Here with Cas, he can just let it all go.

“Are things really bad with Jack?”

Cas sighs. “He’s angry.  At himself, mostly, I think.  He wishes he could do what he could before.  He has difficulty accepting his limitations, and it causes him to lash out.”

Dean has very vivid memories of screaming matches between his father and brother in the Impala, Dad nearly running off the road when it reached a certain pitch.  He can only imagine what that’s like when the kid in question used to have unimaginable power.

“I feel like I’m more of a hurt than a help, sometimes.”

The admission strikes at something in Dean.

“It’s like that with Sam, too,” Dean says before he knows what he’s saying.

Cas glances sideways at him. “What do you mean?”

Dean shrugs. “When we were kids, it was just the two of us, you know?  And when you’re eight, twelve seems ancient. So he looked up to me. Let me call the shots.  Everything from his bedtime when he was little to his curfew when he wasn’t. We butted heads sometimes when we started hunting together, but—”

But then the demon blood happened.  Lucifer happened. Sam lost his faith in his ability to make choices.  And for years, now, he’d followed Dean’s lead just like he had when they were kids.

“Parenting 101,” Cas says after a moment.

Dean looks at him, surprised.  Cas shrugs and continues.

“You prepare them as much as you can.  And then, when it’s time, you let them make their own choices.  And Dean, what Sam is doing here? It’s incredible.”

When his brother directs the phones, when he jokes with the refugees, he’s more in his element than Dean has seen in years.  There’s a confidence in the tilt of his chin that Dean hasn’t seen since the Stanford letter fell out of his backpack all those years ago.

Part of it, Dean knows, is Lucifer’s weight finally lifted from his brother’s shoulders.  But the other part is doing what he’s always been meant to do.

“I know.  I just wish there was a place for me in it.”

Cas nods. “We have a place here, Dean.”

_ We. _

That feeling rises in Dean’s chest again, and this time he doesn’t quash it down.

“Right now, that place is in the kitchen.  Want to help me make some kickass chili?”

Cas smiles. “Nothing I would like more.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you as usual for reading :D
> 
> I love hearing from you all!


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